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Very strange polling results in the Telegraph,

“an ICM opinion poll for The Sunday Telegraph has found. Independence is backed by 52 per cent of Scots while an astonishing 59 per cent of English voters want Scotland to go it alone.”

68 percent of English voters and 58 per cent of Scottish voters support for the establishment of an English parliament with similar powers to the Scottish Parliament.

48 percent of English voters – also want complete independence for England, divorcing itself from Wales and Northern Ireland as well.

The reasons given for the support for an English parliament

60 per cent of English voters complained of higher levels of public spending per head of the population in Scotland

The West Lothian Question, 62 percent of English and 46 per cent of Scots voters are concerned about the affects of Scottish devolution on the British Parliament. “Alex Salmond, the SNP leader, said: “In England, people quite rightly resent Scottish Labour MPs bossing them about on English domestic legislation. England has as much right to self government as Scotland does.”

“In the sporting arena, 70 per cent of English people said they would support a Scottish team playing football or rugby against a nation other than England. But, when the question was put to Scots, only 48 per cent said they would back England with 34 per cent supporting their opponents, no matter which country it was.”

That last, points to what I see as strange about the results, if 48 percent of English want complete independence for England the final figures do not make sense because

“The poll showed that the English are more likely to think of themselves as British than the Scots are. Only 16 per cent of English people said they were “English, not British“, compared to 26 per cent of Scots who said they were “Scottish, not British.”

Like all polling much depends on who asks the questions, who they choose to ask, what choices are offered, and how the raw results are manipulated For instance what other constitutional arrangements were offered to the respondents. What is clear from this polling is that many people are now very concerned about the constitutional settlement of the United Kingdom after Mr Blair and his colleagues have created the problems in the first place.

A further point about polling is how the results are interpreted; the headline could have been 84 percent of English people think of themselves as British instead of England wants its independence that would put a totally different spin on the results and indicate a different preference for a constitutional settlement.